The Ice Queen: A Novel (11 page)

“May we ask you a few questions, or would you rather we postpone it to some other time?” Pia asked.

“No, no. It’s all … Now is fine.” Vera Kaltensee conjured an apple blossom white handkerchief from the pocket of her knit cashmere jacket, dabbed at her eyes, and blew her nose. “It’s just such a shock to get news like this. Herrmann is … I mean, he was … such a good, close friend of our family for so many years. And for him to die in such a dreadful way…”

Again her eyes filled with tears.

“In Mr. Schneider’s house, we found an invitation to your birthday party,” said Pia. “And there were also regular payments from KMF to his account in a Swiss bank.”

Vera Kaltensee nodded. She had composed herself now and spoke in a soft yet firm voice.

“Herrmann was an old friend of my late husband,” she explained. “After he retired, he was a consultant to our Swiss subsidiary, KMF Suisse. Herrmann was previously a financial officer, so his knowledge and advice were quite valuable.”

“What do you know about Mr. Schneider and his past?” Bodenstein asked. He was still holding the cane in his hand.

“Professional or private?”

“Both, preferably. We’re looking for someone who had a reason to kill Mr. Schneider.”

“I really have no idea.” Vera Kaltensee shook her head emphatically. “He was such a sweet man. After his wife died, he lived all alone in that house of his, although his health was not good. But he refused to move to a retirement home.”

Pia could imagine why. There he couldn’t have watched the old Nazi newsreels or hung an autographed photo of Adolf Hitler on the wall. But she said nothing.

“How long have you known Mr. Schneider?”

“A long time. As I said, he was a very good friend of Eugen, my late husband.”

“Did he also know Mr. Goldberg?”

“Yes, of course.” Vera Kaltensee seemed a bit annoyed. “Why do you ask?”

“We found the same number at both crime scenes,” said Bodenstein. “One one six four five. It was written in the victims’ blood and might indicate some connection between the two crimes.”

Vera Kaltensee did not reply immediately. Her hands gripped the armrests of her chair. For a fraction of a second, an expression flitted across her face that surprised Pia.

“One one six four five?” the old woman repeated pensively. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Before Bodenstein could say anything, a man came into the salon. He was tall and thin, almost gaunt. With his suit, silk scarf, three-day growth of beard, and shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, he looked like an aging actor. In amazement, he looked from Bodenstein to Pia and finally at Vera. Pia was sure she knew him from somewhere.

“I didn’t know you had visitors, Mother,” he said, and made as if to leave. “Please excuse the interruption.”

“Don’t go!” Vera Kaltensee’s voice was sharp, but she was smiling when she turned to Bodenstein and Pia. “This is Elard, my eldest son. He lives here with me.”

Then she looked again at her son.

“Elard, this is Detective Superintendent von Bodenstein from the Kripo in Hofheim, Gabriela’s son-in-law. And this is his colleague … Please forgive me, I didn’t catch your name.”

Before Pia could say a word, Elard Kaltensee spoke up. His smoky voice had a pleasant, melodious sound.

“Ms. Kirchhoff.” He astonished her with his phenomenal memory for names. “It’s been quite a while since we last met. How is your husband?”

Professor Elard Kaltensee, Pia thought. Of course she knew him. He was an art historian and for many years had been the dean of his department at the university in Frankfurt. As acting head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, her ex-husband, Henning, also belonged to the faculty of the university, so she had occasionally attended functions at which Elard Kaltensee had also been present. Pia remembered hearing a rumor that he was a ladies’ man and had a preference for young female artists. He had to be over sixty now, she realized, but he was still attractive, albeit in a somewhat dissipated way.

“Thank you for asking.” Pia omitted mentioning that she and Henning had divorced two months ago. “He’s doing fine.”

“Herrmann has been murdered,” Vera Kaltensee remarked. Her voice was quavering again. “That’s why the police are here.”

“Oh no,” said Elard Kaltensee, raising his eyebrows. “When did it happen?”

“Late last night or in the early-morning hours today,” said Bodenstein. “He was shot in the foyer of his house.”

“That’s terrible.” Professor Kaltensee received the news without any visible emotion, and Pia wondered whether he might know something about Schneider’s Nazi past. But she could hardly ask. Not here and not now.

“Your mother has already told us that Mr. Schneider was a good friend of your late father,” said Bodenstein. Pia noticed the glance that Elard Kaltensee cast at his mother. She thought she noticed a trace of amusement in his expression.

“That’s right,” he replied.

“We’re assuming there’s a connection with the murder of David Goldberg,” Bodenstein went on. “At both scenes, we found a number that presents us with a riddle. Someone had written ‘one one six four five’ using the victims’ blood.”

Vera Kaltensee uttered a choking sound.

“One one six four five?” her son repeated thoughtfully. “That could—”

“Oh, it’s so horrible! This is all too much for me!” Vera Kaltensee burst out, covering her eyes with her right hand. Her narrow shoulders shook, and she began sobbing. In sympathy, Bodenstein took her left hand and said softly that they could continue the conversation later. Pia, however, was not watching her, but her son. Elard Kaltensee made no move to console his mother, whose sobs had grown louder. Instead, he went to the sideboard and calmly poured himself a cognac. His face was completely unmoved, but his eyes revealed what Pia could only describe as contempt.

*   *   *

His heart was pounding, and he stepped back a bit when he heard the footsteps on the other side of the door. Then the front door swung open. The sight of Katharina took his breath away once more. She was wearing a pink linen dress and a white jacket, her gleaming black hair falling in great locks over her shoulders, her long legs suntanned.

“Hello, sweetheart. How are you?” Thomas Ritter forced himself to smile and went over to her. She coolly looked him up and down.

“
Sweetheart,
” she repeated derisively, “are you trying to make fun of me?”

As beautiful as she was, she could also be so rude. But that was part of her appeal. Alarmed, Ritter wondered if Katharina could have found out about him and Marleen; he rejected that notion. For weeks, she’d been either at the publishing house in Zürich or on Mallorca, so she couldn’t possibly know.

“Come in.” She turned around and he followed her through the sprawling penthouse and all the way out onto the terrace. The thought went through his head that Katharina would probably be royally amused if she found out what he’d done. When it came to the Kaltensee family, they shared a strong desire for revenge. But he wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of laughing with Katharina about Marleen.

“So,” Katharina said, stopping and not offering him a chair, “how far along are you? My boss is starting to get impatient.”

Ritter hesitated.

“I’m still not happy with the first few chapters,” he admitted. “It’s almost as if Vera appeared out of thin air in Frankfurt in 1945. There are no earlier photos, no family documents—nothing at all. Right now, the whole manuscript reads like any old celebrity bio.”

“But you told me you had a really hot source!” Katharina Ehrmann frowned, annoyed. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re trying to stall?”

“I’m not,” replied Ritter gloomily. “I’m really not. But Elard keeps avoiding me and pretends not to be available.”

The radiant blue sky arced over the Old Town in Königstein, but Ritter had no interest in the spectacular view from Katharina’s penthouse terrace, a scape extending from the ruins of the fortress on one side to the Villa Andreae on the other.

“Your source is Elard?” Katharina shook her head. “You should have told me that earlier.”

“What good would that have done? Do you think he’d rather talk to you than to me?”

Katharina Ehrmann scrutinized him.

“Whatever,” she said at last. “Just make use of what I told you. That should be enough ammunition.”

Ritter nodded and bit his lower lip.

“I still have a small problem,” he said in embarrassment.

“How much do you need?” Katharina Ehrmann asked, her face stony.

Ritter hesitated, then sighed. “Five thousand would fill the biggest holes.”

“You’ll get the money, but under one condition.”

“And what’s that?”

Katharina Ehrmann gave him a sardonic smile. “You’re going to finish writing the book in the next three weeks. It has to come out by early September, when my bosom friend Jutta plans to be nominated as the top candidate.”

Three weeks! Thomas Ritter stepped over to the parapet of the terrace. How the hell had he wound up in this shitty situation? His life had been in good shape until he’d lost his common sense in an attack of megalomania. When he’d told Katharina about his idea of writing a tell-all biography of Vera, he hadn’t imagined what enthusiasm this plan would trigger in the former best friend of Jutta Kaltensee.

Katharina had never forgiven Jutta for the ice-cold way in which she’d been dumped; she was hungry for revenge, although it wasn’t really necessary. Her brief marriage to the Swiss publisher Beat Ehrmann had been more than profitable for her in terms of finances. Old Ehrmann, in a grandiose overestimation of his physical prowess a mere two years after their wedding, had suffered a heart attack between the thighs of his best editor, and Katharina had inherited everything: his fortune, his possessions, his publishing company. But the insult she’d suffered from Jutta’s jealous intrigue was obviously still festering. Katharina had made Thomas Ritter’s mouth water at the prospect of the millions he could earn from writing a scandalous biography about one of the most famous women in modern Germany. Subsequently, he had lost everything that had ever meant anything to him: his job, his reputation, his future. Because Vera had found out about his little project and thrown him out. Since then, he’d been a social pariah, living more or less off of Katharina’s money, working at a job that he deeply despised. He found himself unable to escape this situation. His secret marriage to Marleen, which in his blind vindictiveness had seemed like such a brilliant idea, had proved to be merely another trap. He just didn’t know anymore what he could say to whom.

Katharina stepped up beside him. “Every day I have to think up new excuses for why you haven’t delivered that damned manuscript,” she said in a sharp tone that he hadn’t heard before. “They want to see some results, since we’ve been shoving money up your ass for months now.”

“You’ll have the complete manuscript in three weeks,” Thomas hurriedly promised her. “I have to do some rewrites on the beginning, because I didn’t find out what I’d hoped to discover. But the thing with Eugen Kaltensee is explosive enough.”

“I hope so, for your sake.” Katharina Ehrmann tilted her head. “And for mine. Even though it’s my publishing company, I’m accountable to my business partners.”

Ritter managed a guileless smile. He was very aware of his looks and his charm. Experience had taught him that he possessed something that made women fall at his feet. The lovely Katharina was no exception.

“Come on, darling.” He leaned on the parapet and stretched out his arms. “Let’s leave business till later. I’ve missed you.”

She remained aloof for a few more moments, then let down her guard and even smiled.

“It’s a matter of millions,” she reminded him in a softer voice. “Our legal team has found a way to get around the interim injunction regarding publishing the book in Switzerland.”

Ritter let his lips drift down to her slim neck and sensed a growing desire in his groin as she now urgently pressed against him. After the boring, tepid sex with Marleen, he was getting excited at the thought of Katharina’s violent abandon and the way she could push him to his sexual limits.

“Besides,” she murmured, undoing her belt, “I’m going to talk to Elard myself. He never could refuse me anything.”

*   *   *

“Did you notice the way she reacted when she heard that number?” Pia asked as they drove from Mühlenhof to the station in Hofheim. She’d been fretting about what she thought she’d seen for just an instant on the face of Vera Kaltensee. Anxiety? Hatred? Shock? “And the way she spoke to her son was so … imperious.”

“I didn’t notice a thing.” Bodenstein shook his head. “And even if she did have a strange reaction, it’s quite understandable. We had just told her that an old friend of the family had been shot. How do you happen to know the son, by the way?”

Pia explained. “The news of Schneider’s death seemed to leave him cold,” she added. “He didn’t look particularly shocked.”

“And what do you make of that?”

“Not a thing.” She shrugged. “At most, that he didn’t especially like either Schneider or Goldberg. But he didn’t have a single consoling word for his mother, either.”

“Maybe he thought she was getting enough sympathetic support,” Bodenstein teased her, raising an eyebrow and laughing. “I was afraid you were going to break out in tears, too.”

“I know. It was really unprofessional of me,” Pia admitted remorsefully. She was angry that she’d been taken in so easily by the old woman. Normally, she managed to keep enough distance to observe someone’s tears without pity. “Sobbing white-haired grandmas must be my Achilles’ heel.”

“Now, now.” Bodenstein gave her an amused sidelong glance. “I used to think your Achilles’ heel was emotionally unstable young men from good families who were suspected of murder.”

Pia got the reference to Lukas van den Berg from a previous case, but her memory was as least as good as Bodenstein’s.

“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, boss,” she countered with a grin. “Now that we’re speaking of weaknesses: I have a vivid memory of a lady veterinarian and her pretty daughter, who—”